Watch Rep. Duncan Hunter Try to Cross a Border Illegally and Fail

Turns out the fence wasn’t really a border at all.

Denis Poroy/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Beleaguered California Republican congressman Duncan Hunter, who was indicted last year for illegally using campaign funds to pay for personal expenses, recently took a trip to Yuma, Arizona, to demonstrate once and for all how easy it is to cross the border between the United States and Mexico. 

In a Facebook video released Thursday, Hunter, looking like an unshaven undercover agent standing in the dark, claimed to be 15 meters from the border with Mexico. He said that the country was being “overwhelmed” by immigrants trying to enter and wanted to show exactly how porous our borders were. He repeated how necessary it was for Congress to “secure the border and build a wall.”

“We expect to stop transnational terrorists, families, all illegal aliens from crossing the border,” he said incredulously as he pointed to a low fence he thought marked  the border and easily climbed over it. Unfortunately, he missed his target. A Border Patrol spokesman told the Times of San Diego that the actual border was along the Colorado River 100 feet away from where Hunter stood. 

“Hunter either broke the law and violated conditions of his release issued by a judge not to leave the continental US, or he was pulling a political stunt and lied,” his one-time Democratic opponent Ammar Campa-Najjar said in a statement to NBC News on Friday. Earlier this year, Campa-Najjar announced he would challenge Hunter again in 2020. 

In August, a federal judge told Hunter and his wife Margaret, his former campaign manager, that they couldn’t leave the United States or travel to Mexico while they were out on bail. Hunter’s spokesman told the Times of San Diego that Campa-Najjar’s insistence that Hunter violated his parole represented a “non-issue typical of someone desperate for a headline” that took the focus away from border security. 

Hunter and his wife are expected to go on trial in September. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate